This vintage, yet clip-art like, drawing has fun with a term we rarely use anymore – tabbies. The short poem that accompanied this drawing referred to the three ladies, not the three cats, as tabbies. A tabby can be defined as a spinster or a hateful gossip. It is also a reference to a cat, most often a female cat. While there’s no way of knowing if the ladies in this drawing are truly hateful gossips, we do know that at least one of the cats is a female since all calico cats are females – we’ll just have to assume that the black and white cats are also females.
Have fun with this Kate Greenaway drawing. If you need three ladies gossiping, then I’ve found a great contender for you.
Under the Window is one of the many children’s books which contained illustrations by Kate Greenaway (1846-1901). It was published in 1879.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
